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Yes, fugue fever continues. :-P I hereby apologize to anyone who might be allergic to, have a phobia of, or otherwise dislike or disdain fugues. But since there is so much brouhaha around here…Continue

I'm several months late, but this piece was intended to have been an entry to the past "Emotions" contest by Gav. It's subtitled "Exuberance" for its boundless optimism. Hope you enjoy it as much…Continue

It's kinda late for this, but I've been wanting to do this yet never got around to it until now. This is my contest entry for last year's Heat contest. It didn't win any awards, but I'm not exactly…Continue

Fugues have a reputation of being "serious" -- "academic" fugues, that is, meaning the rigid, dry grading standard of counterpoint class imposed upon composition students -- so I thought, what about…Continue

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"Pitch, as our brains perceive it, is not necessarily tied to a specific (physical) frequency. As Manfred says, it could be a range of frequencies that's grouped under the umbrella of a single "pitch". Physiologically speaking,…"

"Yeah, I remember trying to "acquire" PP by following what my friend did -- play a reference pitch repeatedly and trying to "memorize" it. It didn't work for me. It lasted as long as I consciously kept that pitch…"

"P.S. Some funny anecdotes: I have a friend who does has PP, and I remember when we were kids he would have these "PP practice sessions" where he would play a note on the piano and concentrate really hard to try to "learn" its…"

"I don't have perfect pitch, and I truly envy those who do!
But I have found that my "relative pitch" has been immensely helpful in transposing on-the-fly. Since what I "hear" in my head does not have a fixed pitch, I…"

"Haha, the idea of a tango fugue certainly occurred to me... but as I mentioned in the other forum, I doubt I will have the time to do a decent job for it, given that I know almost nothing about tango as a musical form. I did do a quick, cursory…"

"I'm really embarrassed that I've been participating in this thread without listening to the piece posted. So I just went and listened to it.
I like it; quite calm and soothing, and I suppose this is the "slow movement" of…"

"This makes me wonder, what order of accidentals should be used for a non-conventional key signature? And since the whole tone scale only has 6 scale degrees, should an accidental be written for the 7th note (e.g., to make it coincide with one…"

"Lawrence, it is untrue that there are no programs that have key signatures for whole tone scales. The software I use, Lilypond, allows non-classical key signatures where you can specify any combination of sharps and flats for each pitch class. This…"

"HI HS. Yes, i do think it works better w/ your revisions. Changing the arc of the bass in m51 1st 2 beats, in stead of parallel mov't… and lifting the bass up in m52… It all goes by so fast… I could still hear it a…"

"@Gregorio: sorry for taking so long to get back on this. I liked what you did with mm.51-53, but it unfortunately dropped 3 notes from the end of the CS retrograde inversion in the soprano. This is the part where you mentioned…"

"Hi Gregorio,
Thanks for taking the time to work with this. I tried your version of m.13 but the bass line didn't seem to fit very well with the surrounding context. (Could just be bias from hearing the original version too …"

"here is a modification to 51, 52, into 53..
( i brought up the bass -- as you mentioned, and added some connecting tissue - and dropped the last beat in m 52 down an octave, and gave it to the alto, and had the alto played in the soprano..(w/…"

"Yes, HS what about - in m 13, tenor : change to E on the & of 1. And D on beat 2.
In the alto: change to F# on beat 2. This will keep the lines' directions going the same way- (mostly). Also, i think it works quite niece…"

About Me (Must include biographical information about you as a composer):

I'm a professional software developer by day, and various things by night, including amateur composer. I've been interested in composition since my early teenage years many years ago -- Beethoven being my initial inspiration to pursue composition (specifically, the storm movement of his 6th symphony). My first attempts at composition date from 1990. Sadly, I never pursued music as a career, and ended up doing software instead. My time has also been very limited, and I have not composed as much as I would have liked to. I also lack formal music training, having picked up most of what I know from books, listening to classical music, and piano improvisation. Most of my pieces are written for piano, but my dream has always been to compose for an orchestra. So far, however, that has not yet materialized, though I do have at least two pieces (one skeletal, the other scored for computer but I feel the orchestration needs to be completely reworked) that I hope to flesh out and one day hear performed live.

Comment Wall (3 comments)

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Hello H.S. and thank you for your very kind message. Actually, I'm just coming off a very serious eye condition triggered, I suppose by an equally serious upper and lower respiratory thing I picked up on a flight back from Berlin in May (I'm in Los Angeles). The eye required surgery to set things right and I'm just now getting my vision back in the one eye (the other was unaffected). Actually I've had problems with this eye in the past so I'm not surprised the respiratory condition reignited it. This is since May 3 when I got back and I'm just kicking the respiratory infection now. It's been a grueling---what--three months? I've never had anything like this before. Had to be some kind of exotic bug from the deepest parts of Asia or Africa or something because I usually bounce back from these things in 4-5-days. This took 3 different courses of antibiotics to finally get under control (coughing up blood and blowing blood out of my nostrils at one point, but no TB) and I was still coughing a month afterwards. Beware flying internationally. Nowadays you take your life into your hands getting exposed to all these potent diseases like Ebola floating around.

Greatly appreciate you letting me know you enjoy the concerto. You're right; I do get discouraged frequently because generally speaking most musicians aren't interested in doing an ultra-Romantic work these days, especially one that requires such large forces (expert pianist plus accomplished orchestra) to pull off properly. I did get word from someone who loves the concerto--psychologist and author Darrel Ray that he had a friend of his try to get it into the hands of David Stern, violinist Isaac Stern's son who is the conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra but I haven't heard anything since. This was about 6 weeks ago. Got my fingers crossed. Maybe someone can pull a miracle off. I hope so. Thanks so much for getting in touch. I will keep you apprised of any developments. Wishing you all the best and looking forward to any news you might want to share about your own career happenings. Take care,

Hi H. S. and thank you for your very kind comments re My Piano Concerto No 2. Not sure if you were able to get to my bio. Thunbnail; started studying piano seriously at 10; wanted to write a piano concerto desperately by 16 but didn't actually do it until 18 when I wrote a horrid 1st mov. to a Piano Concerto in C Minor in 2-piano/4-hand. Injured my RH forefinger severely at 19-20 (don't remember) but continued with BA and injured finger until giving piano up at 25.

I agree. I'd love to hear this live. The screen-capture mutilated the audio. The SoundCloud audio is much better, but still sounds like an electronic rendering. To put on a performance of this concerto would cost roughly 150K for a top-tier orchestra/pianist so that's not in the offing anytime soon. My advice: don't write piano concertos if you're thinking of getting them performed. Stick with smaller works for small ensembles. Much greater chance of getting them performed live. I will check out your music tomorrow. Just getting this message really late (nearing midnight--yawn) So glad you enjoyed the concerto and noticing that it is cyclic. You're the first out of roughly 5000 viewers to comment on that (including earlier versions on YouTube which I have since deleted). J Joe

H. S. Teoh's Blog

This morning I decided to sit through a performance of Mahler's 4th symphony on youtube... in the hopes of expanding my horizons with Mahler and all that, y'know, since in the past I've really only heard his 1st symphony in full, and only snippets of the others.

Unfortunately, I have to confess my conclusion is still the same as before: his music just doesn't do it for me. I don't deny his genius at the craft, and certainly he's an excellent orchestrator -- probably far beyond what I…

Today I finally got a chance to actually sit down at the piano (well, an electronic one, but still) and try to play my fugue in C# minor myself for the first time. And I was greatly dismayed to discover that I couldn't play it at all... What sounded relatively tame in midi turned out to be extremely difficult for me to play. That's probably a sign of how lousy my non-existent piano skills are, or perhaps fugues are…

Recently I've been listening to many tuba concertos, to get an idea of the repertoire out there and what's possible on a tuba solo. Today I found this one, which, while it doesn't really feature any particularly unusual solo tricks or virtuoso stunts, is nevertheless a fun-filled romp with many beautifully scored passages:

This blog entry is really more of a test than anything else... I'm having trouble submitting a new discussion to the analysis and critique section (it keeps ending up in the "we're sorry" page -- this is the 3rd try now), so this is just to see if blog entries will go through.